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I've been reading up on Birkeland and his experiments; fascinating stuff!

Birkeland was an amazing guy (if not so nice to his students now and then: I'm going home you clean up the Terrella ...).
The book Northern Lights by Lucy Yago is a great read.

__________________20 minutes into the futureThis message is bra-bra-brought to you by z-z-z-zik zak
And-And-And I'm going to be back with you - on Network 23 after these real-real-real-really exciting messages
(Max Headroom)follow me on twitter: @tusenfem, or follow Rosetta Plasma Consortium: @Rosetta_RPC

Believe it or not, at least one EU fan says he's prepared to try (no, I'm not going to provide a link; this is from a thread discussing gravitational waves):

Amazing!

An EU follower who is prepared to analyze LIGO data, in order to search for the footprints of a solar flare, yet seems uninterested in testing anything to do with the EU ...

No point in analysing it JT, Metryq has already figured it out:

Quote:

The late Tom Van Flandern estimated the speed of gravity at 20 billion times that of light—effectively infinite at the scale of the Solar system. Eddington argued that if gravity were no faster than light, the planets would speed up in their orbits. Also, celestial mechanics (e.g. navigating space probes) assumes an instantaneous speed for gravity.

Experiments during eclipses show aberration between the Sun's light and its gravity. We see the Sun where it was about 500 seconds ago, while gravity points to the Sun's current location.

Ergo, the LIGO signal was not a gravity wave.

Genius

__________________“There is in every village a torch - the teacher; and an extinguisher - the priest.” - Victor Hugo

“Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.” - George Carlin

An EU follower who is prepared to analyze LIGO data, in order to search for the footprints of a solar flare, yet seems uninterested in testing anything to do with the EU ...

The actual LIGO scientists spend a lot of time on two issues:

a) Making sure they don't miss signals like the one they're looking for
b) Making sure they don't latch onto noise patterns and mislabel them as signals, and understanding exactly how often this can happen in each category of search.

Their effort on (a) is how they found the bloops now known as GW150914. Their effort on (b) is why anyone cares.

In another thread related to this, there's a post on a Motherboard article, by Sarah Scoles, "The People Who Believe Electricity Rules the Universe". She interviewed a number of EU fans, and what she reports is relevant to several posts in this thread.

Originally Posted by Wunover137

I think you vastly overestimate the degree to which EU fans are actually interested in scientific truth and inquiry. What they're really after is just a smug feeling that they know more than the mainstream, and have the inside scoop on reality.

Several of Scoles' interviews are consistent with this.

Originally Posted by Slings and Arrows

The only experimentation ever done by the Electric Universe swindlers (Talbott and Thornhill) is to test the ease at which they can fleece money from gullible cult members -- this test is conducted each year and promoted as an "EU Conference".

Their next test is scheduled for June 17, 2016 in Phoenix, Arizona.
The flimflam price is $350 per deluded fool.

<snip>

Scoles provides some hard data:

Originally Posted by Scoles

One hundred seventy-five people donate $1,905 per month to the Thunderbolts Project Patreon campaign for video production. On its YouTube page, six feature-length documentaries have anywhere between 300,000 and a million views. The group holds annual conferences. This year’s is at the Sheraton in Mesa, Arizona.

There's nothing in her article - that I could find - on how much $$ is dedicated to testing EU ideas. Which, as I have said several times, I find exceedingly odd, considering the constant, um, refrains about "the EU" being science-based.

Perhaps most directly relevant to this thread is this (actually two snippets):

Originally Posted by Scoles

EU makes few predictions. It doesn’t have a unified framework, or mathematical laws underpinning it. The underlying physics doesn’t go far beyond, “It’s electric.” Data doesn’t support or disprove specific hypotheses. And where are all these electrical arcs in space? And what could their power source possibly be?

It’s hard to point out the holes in EU hole by hole because, well, there are a lot. (Here are some others’ attempts to poke holes.) Proponents also cherry-pick individual phenomena to explain: individual entries on how stars shine, how craters form, why galaxies have their shapes, and what causes planets and craters. They don’t give a whole-universe overview detailed enough to unify those phenomena and also apply to phenomena they haven’t yet described.

[...]

Every person I interviewed for this story was thoughtful, curious, and skeptical. They spend their free time learning. They don’t want to accept; they want to investigate. [...] But when a scientist says, “Just trust me,” it’s the job of any other scientist (or science writer) to say, “I don’t,” and to go digging for more, like the Thunderbolts do.

You have it in a nutshell: if EU acolytes are "thoughtful, curious, and skeptical", if they "spend their free time learning", if they "go digging for more", why is there ~zero evidence of any of them being thoughtful and skeptical about "the EU" itself? Why do none of them seem even the slightest bit interested in testing EU ideas?

Over in Thunderdolts, there's a thread devoted to following this one, and commenting on it (no, I'm not going to provide a link). This thread is almost a month old, and the ISF Wallace Thornhill: The Long Path to Understanding Gravity | EU2015 one, which also has a 'mirror' in Thunderdolts, almost six. As far as I can tell, there's nothing in either 'mirror thread', nor in the mirror to the ISF LIGO gravitational wave announcement one that provides even a hint of concrete evidence for the proposition that EU fans are interested in testing "the EU".

a) Making sure they don't miss signals like the one they're looking for
b) Making sure they don't latch onto noise patterns and mislabel them as signals, and understanding exactly how often this can happen in each category of search.

Their effort on (a) is how they found the bloops now known as GW150914. Their effort on (b) is why anyone cares.

I wonder how much time an EUer will spend on part (b)?

Well, we now know that one EUer will spend zero time of part (b). In Thunderdolts, a vocal member is all but certain that the GW150914 signal is "electric" in nature (duh!), a chirp in the magnetosphere which was 'seen' by both observatories.

The math-based, quantitative work he did to demonstrate this? Well, as David Talbott said (in a different context), quantitative work is "a ruse", so no, he did no such thing.

Yes, this always makes me laugh. When did these people sign up to EU? Would Birkeland, if he were still alive, and privy to what we now know, still be pontificating on an electric Sun? I very much doubt it.
Would Alfvén be attending EU conferences, and sending messages of support to Thornhill and Talbott? My guess is that he wouldn't be seen dead anywhere near them.
In it's current guise, i.e. T & T, Scott et al, it has done precisely the square root of sod all. Nobody in the world of real science takes them the least bit seriously, and they have no influence on current thinking.
If any of them see themselves as being a budding Birkeland or Alfvén, then their best bet is to totally dissociate themselves from the loons. If, by some miracle, one of them came up with some sort of valid hypothesis for something, chances are it would be overlooked due to the company they keep.

__________________“There is in every village a torch - the teacher; and an extinguisher - the priest.” - Victor Hugo

“Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.” - George Carlin

Oh deary me; just when I thought they couldn't get any funnier, comes this from their "Which aspects of EU resonate most with you?" thread: "The EU can explain the ancient attenuation of gravity and standard theories cannot. A large dinosaur would be crushed by his own weight in our present gravity."
Had to stop reading at that point for obvious reasons.

__________________“There is in every village a torch - the teacher; and an extinguisher - the priest.” - Victor Hugo

“Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.” - George Carlin

Yes, this always makes me laugh. When did these people sign up to EU? Would Birkeland, if he were still alive, and privy to what we now know, still be pontificating on an electric Sun? I very much doubt it.
Would Alfvén be attending EU conferences, and sending messages of support to Thornhill and Talbott? My guess is that he wouldn't be seen dead anywhere near them.
In it's current guise, i.e. T & T, Scott et al, it has done precisely the square root of sod all. Nobody in the world of real science takes them the least bit seriously, and they have no influence on current thinking.
If any of them see themselves as being a budding Birkeland or Alfvén, then their best bet is to totally dissociate themselves from the loons. If, by some miracle, one of them came up with some sort of valid hypothesis for something, chances are it would be overlooked due to the company they keep.

One aspect that's relevant to this thread: every one of the 'founders' of 'the EU/PC', and the oft claimed 'current members of the EU/PC community' (such as Lerner and Peratt), were/are dead keen on empirical tests, experiments, etc to test their hypotheses, yet, with perhaps one exception (SAFIRE), there's zero evidence that any of the current EU leaders, or high profile posters in the TD forum, have the slightest interest in even thinking about tests!

Much the same is true of 'mathematics': the papers by B, A, L, and P are often chockablock with equations and numbers, some pretty hairy ... yet no EU acolyte seems willing to do even the simplest of high school-based calculations, much less detailed simulations. Although Scoles didn't explore this, I suspect a key reason why many EU supporters avoid the dreaded 'M' is because they are incapable of doing even simple BOTE calculations. And despite their curiosity and desire to keep learning, they have zero interest in, or intent to change that.

One consequence of this self-crippling mindset is the need for the moaning/special pleading/bleating you so often come across: 'all the money is going to mainstream research! If only a tiny part of it were dedicated to research into the EU!' Sometimes I want to scream, "guys, pencils and paper cost you ~nothing! The computers you write your excuses on have FREE software you can do quite detailed modeling, calculations, and simulations on/with! Get off your lazy ***** and start doing some real research!!"

At the same time I wonder if there are EU believers/enthusiasts who have at least sat down, picked up pen and paper, and formed the idea that they'd make a testable prediction. And maybe something like this happens:

OK, here goes, this Wikipedia page seems to have the equations I need. Gimme ten minutes and I'll know the radio-brightness of the Sun-powering Birkeland current. <math math math> Wait, no, I must have something wrong <erase erase erase>. Huh. <rereads wikipedia article on solar radio emissions>. That's way way way too bright, how did I drop a factor of 10^20? <scribble scribble>

"What does that mean? Does it mean the external power source isn't there ... <closes eyes, mumbles brief prayer to Velikovsky> naaaaah. This radio calculation must just be more complicated than I expected, somehow. <tears up paper, closes computer>

Over in Thunderdolts there's indirect evidence that something like this has probably happened (no, I'm not going to provide links, or mention any particular EU acolyte(s)).

Here's what I mean: the observation that the redshifts of galaxies correlate well with distance is one of the key pieces of evidence in support of an expanding universe, per application of GR to the universe as a whole. "the EU" rejects this, and some EU fans have proposed an alternative, "plasma redshift". And some have gone further and proposed "pulse broadening" as an alternative explanation for the "time dilation" seen in the light curves of SNIa. A supposed plus for these are (claimed) "in the lab" experiments which show both.

However, chatter on this seems to have decreased lately. Perhaps the reason is that at least some of the more thoughtful EU proponents have done something like what ben m describes ... and come to the realization that these "plasma redshift" and "pulse broadening" explanations cannot possibly work, for the observed universe (e.g. the density of the IPM, much less the inter-cluster medium, is so much ridiculously lower than any reported experimental test, and even if the effects are extrapolated to estimated ICM densities, they would be vanishingly small).

Leaving the only EU fans who still talk about this as those who clearly cannot do any BOTE calculations anyway.

'Arp woz rite!', about discordant redshifts, is a common EU belief. To me, an obvious thing to do would be to point Hubble at some of his most famous examples, to get better resolution data, spectra, etc. Yet almost no EU fan seems ever to have thought this would be a good idea! Another: a sky survey like SDSS, but of the southern sky.

To be fair people have been asking for that since 2dFgrs ended much too quickly. I don't quite think even a scientific titan like Thornhill could convince the AAO TAC (particularly now that they have HERMES), we will all just have to wait for 4MOST.

But seriously the thing that irks me is despite 10 years of endless 'Arp wins again' comments in every article even mentioning Quasars I have never seen a single one even try to use SDSS. SDSS started releasing spectroscopy way back then. The only discordant redshift papers using SDSS is one that beautifully disproves Arp's idea that QSOs are more common near galaxies and another one which was withdrawn. The database was written practically for children, it's not difficult to use.

"But the establishment would never give us telescope time" is not an excuse if you've never even bothered to look at one of the many data archives. These people don't need a new survey, they need to actually look at the ones which exist.

I find it deeply disturbing that an "astronomical revolution" are not actually interested in doing any astronomy. It would be funny if there weren't so many people falling for it.

It used to be, some years' ago, that Electric Universe (EU) proponents were many, and highly vocal. Look at the number of EU-related threads in the archives of ISF, for example.

These days, those proponents have retreated to Eejet-Tube vids, and unmoderated fora; even their fave forum today has little traffic.

One thing has always baffled me about the EU, and its fanatics: an apparent, complete, lack of any research proposals.

For example, all over the internet you'll find people asking EU fans things like "if you had total control over all the world's leading astronomical facilities - telescopes etc - where would you point them?" or "given unlimited funds, what experiments, here on Earth, would you conduct?" Yet, aside from SAFIRE and perhaps Lerner's Focus Fusion, there are no answers!

At least, none that I could find.

Which I find baffling.

I mean, isn't there even one EU adherent who is curious enough to think about doing an experiment, or making an observation, to test EU ideas? It seems to me that it'd take just one such to vastly improve the EU's standing (assuming the results of such experiments or observations were consistent with "EU theory", whatever that is).

Hence this thread: do any of you, dear readers, know of any published research projects/programs/experiments/observations, proposed by EU supporters (other than SAFIRE and Lerner's Focus Fusion)?

I could be wrong, but I am unaware of any actual scientists with a real physics background and access to real laboratories with real advanced physics capabilities working on the EU silliness.. So, I would have to say "NO!" on that

__________________There is no problem so great that it cannot be fixed by small explosives carefully placed.

I do believe I have asked this possibly rhetorical question before but, "How do you explain the lack of evidence of the Stark_effectWP in the presence of the monstrously huge electric fields that rule the Solar System? Galaxy? Universe?"

Might I safely assume that if you get any response at all it is "What the hell is the Stark effect? Does it have something to do with Tony or his father?"

__________________There is no problem so great that it cannot be fixed by small explosives carefully placed.

To be fair people have been asking for that since 2dFgrs ended much too quickly. I don't quite think even a scientific titan like Thornhill could convince the AAO TAC (particularly now that they have HERMES), we will all just have to wait for 4MOST.

But seriously the thing that irks me is despite 10 years of endless 'Arp wins again' comments in every article even mentioning Quasars I have never seen a single one even try to use SDSS. SDSS started releasing spectroscopy way back then. The only discordant redshift papers using SDSS is one that beautifully disproves Arp's idea that QSOs are more common near galaxies and another one which was withdrawn. The database was written practically for children, it's not difficult to use.

"But the establishment would never give us telescope time" is not an excuse if you've never even bothered to look at one of the many data archives. These people don't need a new survey, they need to actually look at the ones which exist.

I find it deeply disturbing that an "astronomical revolution" are not actually interested in doing any astronomy. It would be funny if there weren't so many people falling for it.

You are right, of course, and I should have highlighted this better.

In fact, much earlier in this thread, tusenfem made a similar point. And he has made just this point, many times, re freely available data on comets (in a different thread).

As I frequently use SDSS data myself, I continue to be astonished that no EU zealot has even bothered to look at it, much less test EU hypotheses with it (so it seems).

One aspect that's relevant to this thread: every one of the 'founders' of 'the EU/PC', and the oft claimed 'current members of the EU/PC community' (such as Lerner and Peratt), were/are dead keen on empirical tests, experiments, etc to test their hypotheses, yet, with perhaps one exception (SAFIRE), there's zero evidence that any of the current EU leaders, or high profile posters in the TD forum, have the slightest interest in even thinking about tests!

Much the same is true of 'mathematics': the papers by B, A, L, and P are often chockablock with equations and numbers, some pretty hairy ... yet no EU acolyte seems willing to do even the simplest of high school-based calculations, much less detailed simulations. Although Scoles didn't explore this, I suspect a key reason why many EU supporters avoid the dreaded 'M' is because they are incapable of doing even simple BOTE calculations. And despite their curiosity and desire to keep learning, they have zero interest in, or intent to change that.

One consequence of this self-crippling mindset is the need for the moaning/special pleading/bleating you so often come across: 'all the money is going to mainstream research! If only a tiny part of it were dedicated to research into the EU!' Sometimes I want to scream, "guys, pencils and paper cost you ~nothing! The computers you write your excuses on have FREE software you can do quite detailed modeling, calculations, and simulations on/with! Get off your lazy ***** and start doing some real research!!"

There's another, popular, refrain among EU zealots (I think I'll use this term almost exclusively from now on, it is just sooo apt): the abdication of the need to do any real work themselves, because others have already proven (certain, key) "EU" results, beyond any doubt.

Examples are too numerous to list, but two recent ones, from "EU central": results from IBEX prove that the Sun is powered by giant interstellar Birkeland currents, or that such currents exist but don't penetrate the heliosphere in an obvious way (yeah, EU zealots don't really 'do' consistency); and that cosmological redshifts are due to some sort of plasma-related process.

The latter one is especially ironic, given that, in a recent version of the claim, three different sources are given, none of them remotely related to "EU/PC"! Not to mention that two are (extremely) mutually incompatible (both are crackpot ideas, which even fairly straight-forward consistency checks show to be wildly incompatible with the very physics cited as the foundations!).

The third is far more interesting, if it were not so pathetic (I may add details later): it's an exercise in model-fitting, with a quite limited scope, and it produces an interesting, albeit limited, result.

Why is it "pathetic"? Partly because no EU zealot had, apparently, thought to do this research themselves (no, no big investment required, just the ability to read the relevant papers, extract data, and do some relatively straight-forward analyses), but mainly because the result seems to be so badly misunderstood.

There's another, popular, refrain among EU zealots (I think I'll use this term almost exclusively from now on, it is just sooo apt): the abdication of the need to do any real work themselves, because others have already proven (certain, key) "EU" results, beyond any doubt.

Examples are too numerous to list, but two recent ones, from "EU central": results from IBEX prove that the Sun is powered by giant interstellar Birkeland currents, or that such currents exist but don't penetrate the heliosphere in an obvious way (yeah, EU zealots don't really 'do' consistency); and that cosmological redshifts are due to some sort of plasma-related process.

The latter one is especially ironic, given that, in a recent version of the claim, three different sources are given, none of them remotely related to "EU/PC"! Not to mention that two are (extremely) mutually incompatible (both are crackpot ideas, which even fairly straight-forward consistency checks show to be wildly incompatible with the very physics cited as the foundations!).

The third is far more interesting, if it were not so pathetic (I may add details later): it's an exercise in model-fitting, with a quite limited scope, and it produces an interesting, albeit limited, result.

Why is it "pathetic"? Partly because no EU zealot had, apparently, thought to do this research themselves (no, no big investment required, just the ability to read the relevant papers, extract data, and do some relatively straight-forward analyses), but mainly because the result seems to be so badly misunderstood.

nono, you forget that the math to describe the COMPLEX NONLINEAR plasma interactions does not exist yet, all mainstream is doing is approximate and not exact, and thus furptile (unless it fits the EU profile of course)

__________________20 minutes into the futureThis message is bra-bra-brought to you by z-z-z-zik zak
And-And-And I'm going to be back with you - on Network 23 after these real-real-real-really exciting messages
(Max Headroom)follow me on twitter: @tusenfem, or follow Rosetta Plasma Consortium: @Rosetta_RPC

nono, you forget that the math to describe the COMPLEX NONLINEAR plasma interactions does not exist yet, all mainstream is doing is approximate and not exact, and thus furptile (unless it fits the EU profile of course)

That's certainly true, and it applies in the three (actually four) examples of 'alternative' explanations of cosmological redshifts I indirectly referenced above.

For example, one EU zealot has been pushing Ari Brynjolfsson’s Plasma Redshift for several years, and even took part in a discussion on it, right here in ISF (see, for example, this post by ben m). In another, the alternative depends on there being a (classical) aether, with no apparent recognition that Earthly 'in the lab' experiments have ruled out this (e.g. MMX). And a third produces an easily checked prediction on the extent of 'blurring' of images of distant objects (almost any extra-galactic image from the Hubble is inconsistent with this plasma redshift mechanism).

But hey, consistency is clearly not important for "the EU"; all that matters is that someone, somewhere, has published a 'tired light' idea, preferably one which has the word 'plasma' in it ...

Just for fun, here's another of the wild nonsense some EU zealots have spouted (this one is by comingfrom, IIRC; I'm paraphrasing): NASA has proven that there are plasma currents in the Io torus, which is a prediction of "the EU". Therefore, "the EU" as a whole is proven, and that the observed orbits of the solar system's planets are due to electromagnetism, not gravity (no, I am not kidding).

To be fair people have been asking for that since 2dFgrs ended much too quickly. I don't quite think even a scientific titan like Thornhill could convince the AAO TAC (particularly now that they have HERMES), we will all just have to wait for 4MOST.

But seriously the thing that irks me is despite 10 years of endless 'Arp wins again' comments in every article even mentioning Quasars I have never seen a single one even try to use SDSS. SDSS started releasing spectroscopy way back then. The only discordant redshift papers using SDSS is one that beautifully disproves Arp's idea that QSOs are more common near galaxies and another one which was withdrawn. The database was written practically for children, it's not difficult to use.

"But the establishment would never give us telescope time" is not an excuse if you've never even bothered to look at one of the many data archives. These people don't need a new survey, they need to actually look at the ones which exist.

I find it deeply disturbing that an "astronomical revolution" are not actually interested in doing any astronomy. It would be funny if there weren't so many people falling for it.

You are right, of course, and I should have highlighted this better.

In fact, much earlier in this thread, tusenfem made a similar point. And he has made just this point, many times, re freely available data on comets (in a different thread).

As I frequently use SDSS data myself, I continue to be astonished that no EU zealot has even bothered to look at it, much less test EU hypotheses with it (so it seems).

There was some recent activity in the comments on the "Testing the Electric Universe" blog post, in Brian Koberlein's One Universe at a Time. Two recent commenters tried to defend "the EU", and there was more of the whinging (excuses) about how development of "the EU" (as a theory) was being hindered by lack of funds, etc.

None of the three (new to that commentary) EU fans mentioned that it takes essentially zero $$, and not too much effort, to write a detailed description of possible tests, which could be done by limited time on the Hubble (say), or simply by using publicly available datasets such as SDSS. In replying to them, I concluded "Why has no fan of “the EU” ever done anything like this?"

I mean, the time it took SteveR (say) to write, edit, and post his whines was surely longer than the time it'd take him to outline a possible astronomical test of "the EU", using SDSS data!

Oh, and I've been dipping into the TD forum every now and then, to see if someone there is revolutionary enough to at least suggest that such astronomical tests are not only possible but relatively straight-forward to do (or at least describe). Nothing, nada, zip.

The Stark Effect (as Wikified in my earlier post) is the broadening of lines in spectra of light caused by the passage of the light through an electric field. If space was full of electric fields strong enough to whip planets around, the effect would measurably affect light the spectra of visible stars. It does not. The Effect can be seen astronomically under the right conditions and has been since the mid-1920s. See: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1937Obs....60..235W for one reference.

__________________"Reality is what's left when you cease to believe." Philip K. Dick

There are, IMHO, thousands of such questions, and they get asked - of EU fans - all the time.

To the extent that there are any meaningful responses, none - it seems to me - include the concept that someone could devise an experiment or observation to actually test the EU claims. Yeah, EUers couldn't do any such tests anyway, even with extensive support; however, the most puzzling thing is why they seem so completely uninterested in any tests, ones designed starting from core EU concepts.

For most of them, in their daily lives, they surely are not so uninterested, are they?

For example, if the lights in the kitchen go out, they surely think of seeing if a circuit breaker has tripped, or that lights in other rooms still work, or that other houses in the street still have lights on, or ... don't they? I mean, they don't immediately conclude the local grid has gone down, and call their electrical utility's hotline, do they?

My sense is: EU fans are genuinely "crackpots" rather than "physicists with an unpopular idea."

I don't think it is that simple. Your sense is off.

Case in point, what about fans who are entertained? There is entertainment value in thunderbolts, and I think the money men are playing that out to the extreme. Think about movies that have fantastic claims, like in Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, etc.

Do you not watch those movies because the physics is all wrong? Or like Captain America's shield doing weird stuff? Or the fact that only the rightful ruler of Azgard (sp?) is the only person who can pick up Thor's hammer?

I have read all the comments, besides the short mention of there being a controversy (it should be noted that controversy sells), then there is nothing of content here. Just the same ole whining that they are not doing testable predictions or whatever. There are other reasons for things people do, fact is, I think the EU fans are probably less closed minded than the people in this forum, even myself. That is a golden attribute if anything.

TLDR: EU is more for entertainment than science, that's why they don't bother with experiments.

__________________Planets are not formed from disks, that would be in violation of the conservation of angular momentum.

A "planet" is just an ancient star. They were never mutually exclusive.

You seem ignorant about the deluded nature of the Thunderbolts "cult", jeffreyw. They have a couple of deluded "prophets" who follow neo-Velikovskian nonsense. It is that simple.David Talbott wrote a book putting Saturn above the Earth's North Pole because of myths!
Wallace Thornhill has the delusion that electrical discharges created the Grand Canyon and that lying to his readers works (well it does for the cult followers!).
Which leads to the delusion that comets are rocks blasted off the surface of the Earth in recent times when Venus swung by, maybe for the third time !10th April 2015: The ignorance, delusions and lies in the Thunderbolts web site, videos, etc. mostly cited by Haig.

There is no "whining": Anyone who can read can read about Talbott's delusions and see that Wallace Thornhill lied about the Deep Impact results back in 2005 (two flashes observed on and after impact is not a confirmed prediction of a flash before impact!). That no one in the forum has pointed this out suggests that the forum posters have fallen for the Thunderbolts dogma. Or are banned as soon as they try to talk about the real world.

^^^Preeeeecisely. That is why the genius Wal hasn't written anything about the Rosetta mission for about 18 months. Just waiting to figure out how to spin it. Too much moolah to be lost by actually admitting he was wrong. Badly. Just con the idiots into believing he had it right all along! Easy. At least it is with what remains of those loons.
tl;dr? It's a joke.

__________________“There is in every village a torch - the teacher; and an extinguisher - the priest.” - Victor Hugo

“Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.” - George Carlin

Case in point, what about fans who are entertained? There is entertainment value in thunderbolts, and I think the money men are playing that out to the extreme. Think about movies that have fantastic claims, like in Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, etc.

Do you not watch those movies because the physics is all wrong? Or like Captain America's shield doing weird stuff? Or the fact that only the rightful ruler of Azgard (sp?) is the only person who can pick up Thor's hammer?

I have read all the comments, besides the short mention of there being a controversy (it should be noted that controversy sells), then there is nothing of content here. Just the same ole whining that they are not doing testable predictions or whatever. There are other reasons for things people do, fact is, I think the EU fans are probably less closed minded than the people in this forum, even myself. That is a golden attribute if anything.

TLDR: EU is more for entertainment than science, that's why they don't bother with experiments.

Hi,
there is plenty of astrophysics that the EU could look at, and guess what, the numbers don't match.

There are no electrical currents existing strong enough to make stars shine. Period.
Full stop.

__________________I suspect you are a sandwich, metaphorically speaking. -Donn
And a shot rang out. Now Space is doing time... -Ben Burch
You built the toilet - don't complain when people crap in it. _Kid Eager
Never underestimate the power of the Random Number God. More of evolutionary history is His doing than people think. - Dinwar

There was some recent activity in the comments on the "Testing the Electric Universe" blog post, in Brian Koberlein's One Universe at a Time. Two recent commenters tried to defend "the EU", and there was more of the whinging (excuses) about how development of "the EU" (as a theory) was being hindered by lack of funds, etc.

None of the three (new to that commentary) EU fans mentioned that it takes essentially zero $$, and not too much effort, to write a detailed description of possible tests, which could be done by limited time on the Hubble (say), or simply by using publicly available datasets such as SDSS. In replying to them, I concluded "Why has no fan of “the EU” ever done anything like this?"

I mean, the time it took SteveR (say) to write, edit, and post his whines was surely longer than the time it'd take him to outline a possible astronomical test of "the EU", using SDSS data!

Oh, and I've been dipping into the TD forum every now and then, to see if someone there is revolutionary enough to at least suggest that such astronomical tests are not only possible but relatively straight-forward to do (or at least describe). Nothing, nada, zip.

UPDATE:

There were some responses to my ISF post, over in la-la-land (a.k.a. Thunderdolts), mostly just more excuses and bleating; it's crystal clear, by now, that a key reason why no EU acolyte has proposed even the sketchiest tests of "EU theory" is that they are, collectively, innumerate. For example, the steady stream of "looks like a duck Birkeland current" comments/images/etc are never followed by even the slightest hint of "here's how to estimate the current, based on the images" (or similar).

On a slightly positive note, there was a suggestion that it's not doing zero-cost astronomical research (based on what-Arp-would-have-given-his-first-born-for, e.g. SDSS, etc) that will test "the EU", but rather reproducing Birkeland's experiments (no, don't laugh; I think the comment was made in all seriousness). Of course, today we know far more about the density, temperature, composition, etc of the IPM (inter-planetary medium), from the solar corona out to 1 au (and beyond) than Birkeland did, so EU fanatics have a far better chance of testing Birkeland's ideas than he did.

So, is there a concrete proposal or two, for what a lab-based, empirical test might be? An outline of how to appropriately scale a terrella, for example, to represent the IPM density gradient? Nope; not even the slightest hint ... (lots of gratuitous "recommendations", of course, that it should be "professionals" who do all this work; EU fans are nothing if not honest about their inability to do any work of this kind, and their lack of intent to ever learn).

Interestingly, mainstream does still work with terrella experiments, sometimes called planeterrella.
There are at least 12 abstracts in the 2000s, but I doubt the EUtians know about that.

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Interestingly, mainstream does still work with terrella experiments, sometimes called planeterrella.
There are at least 12 abstracts in the 2000s, but I doubt the EUtians know about that.

Cool!

Quote:

... but I doubt the EUtians know about that

I'm pretty sure you're correct; in all my reading of TD - including its "peer-reviewed EU papers" (basically, any astronomy/astrophysics/planetary science paper which seems to contain the words "current" or "electric field" or similar) - no mention of planeterrella.

Unrelated (I forgot to include this in my earlier post): there's a new project, currently in beta, in the Zooniverse, which seems as if it could have been proposed by a numerate EU groupie (but wasn't); when it's launched, I'll write about it. In advance, however, my predictions re EU fanatics' responses:
* pages and pages of excuses as to why it won't/can't test EU ideas
* lots of venom about how mainstream scientists ignore the EU
* for those who participate in the project, lengthy rants about the EU (for which they may eventually be banned)
* on certain, cherry-picked interesting images, lots of "looks like a duck Birkeland current" style posts
* essentially zero understanding of what the images actually show/are
* (that'll do for now)

And another point:
Three weeks ago I was at an AGU Chapman conference on "currents in geospace and beyond".
A week long presentations on all kinds of currents and electric fields in space plasmas!
Here is the link to the program: http://chapman.agu.org/spacecurrents/

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Interestingly, mainstream does still work with terrella experiments, sometimes called planeterrella.
There are at least 12 abstracts in the 2000s, but I doubt the EUtians know about that.

The EU ignorance also seems to extend to the past - they treat the terrella experiments of Birkeland as the one and only set of experiments. But they were around for about 300 years before him! William Gilbert explored the magnetic field of a spherical magnet representing the Earth in 1600.

Unrelated (I forgot to include this in my earlier post): there's a new project, currently in beta, in the Zooniverse, which seems as if it could have been proposed by a numerate EU groupie (but wasn't); when it's launched, I'll write about it. In advance, however, my predictions re EU fanatics' responses:
* pages and pages of excuses as to why it won't/can't test EU ideas
* lots of venom about how mainstream scientists ignore the EU
* for those who participate in the project, lengthy rants about the EU (for which they may eventually be banned)
* on certain, cherry-picked interesting images, lots of "looks like a duck Birkeland current" style posts
* essentially zero understanding of what the images actually show/are
* (that'll do for now)

There's been some recent activity in Brian Koberlein's One Universe at a Time blog, on "the EU". It's in the comments to his blog post (dated 25 February, 2014) Testing the Electric Universe. Scroll down to the bottom, and read the last ~dozen or so comments.

One new thing I learned: Alfvén and Klein published a paper, "Matter-Antimatter Annihilation and Cosmology", in 1963. The reference is "Arkiv för Fysik 23: 187–194". I was unable to find a copy, on the internet; surprisingly it's not in ADS or Google Scholar (except for the abstract). Does anyone know how to get a copy? E.g. a URL, or if you have a PDF (say), can you email it?

I did learn of an excellent opportunity to do some lab-based research into the EU! One that, despite the Thornhill claim being some 15 years' old, seems to have been overlooked by all EU fanatics. Here it is (source):

Originally Posted by Thornhill

The electric Sun model expects far more complex heavy element synthesis to take place in the natural particle accelerators in the photospheric lightning discharges. In that case the various neutrino “flavours” are all generated on the Sun and do not need to “oscillate” on their way to the Earth to make up an imagined deficit.

Yep, you read rightly ... according to Saint High Priest Thornhill, "photospheric lightning discharges" can, and do, generate "the various neutrino “flavours”"

Now according to a member of "the EU/PC community", "every cause/effect claim that is associated with EU/PC theory has the potential of being tested in the lab under controlled conditions".

Wonderful! Let's see a proposal, by an EU fan, for a test in the lab, under controlled conditions, in which a simulation of photospheric lightning discharges produces electron neutrinos (and antineutrinos), muon neutrinos (and antineutrinos), and tau neutrinos (and antineutrinos). Given the wide range of "in the lab" neutrino experiments either planned, under way, or finished, I'm sure such a proposal would be warmly welcomed!

But I won't stop at one; here's another: apparently, in "EU/PC cosmological theory", a simple scattering of starlight in plasma can easily produce the CMB. Seems a perfect concept for being tested in the lab under controlled conditions, right?

Thanks bunches, JT! I started classifying signals and was a little bored until I came to one that was a "chirp" that might be a g-wave! Seems roughly every 30-50 signals has the "chirp" signature; I'm hooked!

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There's been some recent activity in Brian Koberlein's One Universe at a Time blog, on "the EU". It's in the comments to his blog post (dated 25 February, 2014) Testing the Electric Universe. Scroll down to the bottom, and read the last ~dozen or so comments.

One new thing I learned: Alfvén and Klein published a paper, "Matter-Antimatter Annihilation and Cosmology", in 1963. The reference is "Arkiv för Fysik 23: 187–194". I was unable to find a copy, on the internet; surprisingly it's not in ADS or Google Scholar (except for the abstract). Does anyone know how to get a copy? E.g. a URL, or if you have a PDF (say), can you email it?

There is a book by Alfvén on matter-antimatter, which I have, but at the office. Will give you more info tomorrow.

__________________20 minutes into the futureThis message is bra-bra-brought to you by z-z-z-zik zak
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I was interested in the Arkiv för Fysik paper, because of the claim that it clearly shows that Alvfén had a firm grasp of GR, as applied to cosmology. I am no longer interested; the person who made this claim was likely lying when he claimed that he'd actually read it. Also, I think it's highly unlikely that this particular paper would show that Alfvén's really did understand GR (as applied to cosmology), when none of his other publications on the topic do.

Thanks bunches, JT! I started classifying signals and was a little bored until I came to one that was a "chirp" that might be a g-wave! Seems roughly every 30-50 signals has the "chirp" signature; I'm hooked!

Glad you're enjoying it!

It's still in Beta, so you'll likely encounter some rough edges.

I find it particularly interesting that those who are clicking away seem to be continuing to find new classes (or sub-classes) of glitches. And yeah, every now and then, something which looks like a chirp.

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